Confirmed: Need For Speed Rivals Native 1080p For Xbox One, PS4

Xboners rejoice, one of the first multiplatform first-generation games for the new consoles has finally been confirmed to run native 1080p on both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 and it's not just an annually rehashed sports title. It looks like the Xbox 720p is finally trying to live up to being the Xbox 1(080p).

Eurogamer has confirmed that the native resolution for Electronic Arts' Need for Speed: Rivals, being developed by Ghost, is running at 1920 x 1080 with progressive scan on both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

According to Ghost's creative director Craig Sullivan, it's not just a clear-cut issue and that – according to him – the “Resolutiongate” fiasco is an overblown one, considering that each project will have its own ups and downs and not every game will run the way some gamers expect on the newer hardware, saying...

“Right now, the console's aren't even out, and people are trying to say this about development and that about development. The thing is they're both very different to develop for, and they both have their quirks, and I'm sure they will both be reviewed side by side and people will put our game side by side on both platforms - I know Battlefield's getting a lot of that.

"For the first wave of launch software, I think people who are saying it's particularly easy or particularly hard on one, it changes depending on the game and depending on the engine. I don't think you can say this one is better than that one, because I don't think we know enough about them yet to be honest."

I find his argument very interesting given that Need for Speed: Rivals is running on DICE's Frostbite 3 engine, which is the same engine that powers the cross-generational Battlefield 4. I should also mention that Battlefield 4 is running native 900p on the PlayStation 4 and native 720p on the Xbox One.

Any game showing any minor difference in output is being scrutinized down to the pixel (literally) and I find it funny that Sullivan seems slightly dismissive of the pixel-counting culture, which seems to have blown up exponentially this generation, but he shouldn't feel too anxious about it given that at least his game is native 1080p on both consoles. I imagine majority of the comparisons for NFS: Rivals will boil down to frame rate consistency, pop-in, draw distance, texture resolution and GPU stress tests for heavy on-screen special effects. Personally, I would be thrilled about the benchmarks if 1080p has already been nailed and confirmed for both consoles... unless, of course, the game sucks. But that's an entirely different topic for anothertime.

Then again, this news does follow closely on the heels of Infinity Ward's botched benchmark job that now has a lot of gamers calling into question the actual resolution tests conducted with Call of Duty: Ghosts on both the Xbox One and PS4 when it was revealed that the retail units of Ghosts on the PS4 were running native 720p and not native 1080p as Infinity Ward had previous confirmed and Activision had previously advertised.

We'll soon find out how well Rivals runs on both the Xbox One and PS4 as soon as embargos lift for the benchmarks. Ubisoft has already issued a disclaimer that retail units of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag are running 900p on the PS4 until the 1080p title update is made available to bring up the PS4's version of the game to its intended graphics output.

No one can say that the eighth gen of gaming didn't get started with a bang.